Monday, October 31, 2011

Pundit & Pundette: Herman Cain explains Planned Parenthood to Bob Schieffer: "CAIN: If people go back and look at the history and look at Margaret Sanger's own words that's exactly where that came from. Look up the history. If you go back and look up the history. Secondly, look at where most of them were built. 75 percent of those facilities were built in the black community and Margaret Sanger's own words, she didn't use the word genocide, but she did talk about preventing the increasing number of poor blacks in this country by preventing black babies from being born."

Thursday, October 27, 2011

Davy Rothbart interviews Wladimir and Vitali Klitschko about a new documentary on their lives - Grantland: "There's a famous French film director, Claude Lelouch. He was a big boxing fan, and he once said, "Boxing is the cruelest sport, but the one that is most similar to life." In boxing, you need to have a goal and fight for it. Sometimes you deliver punches, sometimes you find yourself on the floor, and that's when you need to find the power to stand up and fight again. In the end, you will be the winner if you have enough heart and enough patience. Life has the same exact rules."

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

FDA Medical Device Approval « Truth on the Market: "The New York Times today has an article on approval of medical devices. The take is that venture capitalists want a more efficient process. The tradeoff mentioned is between faster approval for investor returns versus safety of devices if they are approved faster. There is no mention in the article of the benefits to patients and consumers of more rapid availability of medical devices. The entire literature following the Peltzman analysis delays in drug approval is totally ignored."

Sunday, October 23, 2011

Financial Lessons From Four Nations - NYTimes.com: "Those old enough to remember the 1980s will recall that Japan used to be an up-and-coming economic superpower. Many people then worried (too much, in my view) that Japan’s rapid growth was a threat to prosperity in the United States, in much the same way that many people worry today (too much, in my view) about rapid growth in China."

Horwitz on the Financial Crisis and Recession: "MacWilliams refers to Congress deregulating the financial industries but offers no specifics. In fact, since 1980, Congress has passed four new sets of regulations for every one deregulatory act, and between 2001 and 2008, there were nine new sets of regulation and not one bit of deregulation. Those recent regulations included the Basel capital requirements, which created powerful incentives for banks to sell off the mortgages they originated and buy them back as mortgage backed securities, which they otherwise would not have done."

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

How to Be a Failure - Forbes: "I fail all the time, so often that I am somewhat mystified when I get emails in which people perceive me as successful. Because most of the time, I think of myself as a failure. Which, I’ve come to think, is part of what makes me successful."

Uneven Stevens | Hoover Institution: "Justice Scalia’s contorted logic excised the initial clause before the words “free State” and then read the sentence fragment that remained as subject to an implied limitation that the state could regulate guns to the extent necessary to preserve health and safety. I know of no sound originalist principle that allows a justice to cut out some words from the Constitution in order to add in others that are not there in their place. In this case, it is quite dangerous because the reference to the “militia” linked this clause up to the Militia Clause of Article I, which calls for the joint federal/state control of the militia. The Second Amendment was written so that federal regulation (beyond that allowed for in Article I) could not disrupt the remainder of the constitutional scheme."

Friday, October 14, 2011

Media said to favor smart, savvy, handsome Romney over GOP nobodies - Investors.com: "Just because Romney has a strong Oval Office-type jaw and a warm smile, an immense loving family, a beautiful, gracious wife and a growing number of endorsements from experienced, well-informed Republicans who are keenly interested in winning the White House back next year and ending the ominous national drift toward European-style social democracy."

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Instapundit: "President Obama received a slap from members of his own party Tuesday as the Senate voted 51-48 to block his $447 billion jobs package"

So Obama goes around the country saying how he has this great jobs bill but that Republicans are holding it up, knowing full well that there's no support for the bill. Then Republicans call his bluff and say, lets have a vote on it. Then Reid comes out and chides republicans for playing politics with the bill. Now, a week later we have the vote on the bill and the Democrat controlled senate can't pass it. Love it.